JENKINS: Bill Horn fires up for last campaign

The headline out of a gathering of the San Diego North Economic Development Council may not be a tabloid shocker, but it’s crack to political junkies:

Bill Horn Is Running for One Last Term.

The deck is also tasty to inside baseball fans:

Tom Shepard Will Direct Supervisor’s 2014 Campaign.

Let me explain why these Hot Stove League bulletins get the sap going.

Early Thursday, I walked with Horn from a parking lot at Cal State San Marcos into the lecture hall where the council, a group Horn virtually founded, was holding its meeting.

Billed to bloviate were Shepard, the region’s best-known political consultant, and a columnist who’s covered North County politics since Reagan ruled.

“I’m running,” Horn told me after a quick exchange of hellos in the drizzle.

Like he wanted to get that detail out of the way.

Horn went on to say that he’d tried retiring in his late 30s after running a construction company but didn’t like being part of the leisure class.

“I enjoy it,” he said, meaning that, after 18 years on the Board of Supervisors, he still gets a kick out of governing and, one assumes, crushing all comers.

So there it is. Big Boss Bill of Valley Center is saddling up and riding again.

If he wins a sixth term — term limits passed two years ago preclude a seventh — he’ll be nearly 76 when he quits.

As we approached the door, I slipped in one last question: Will Shepard, who’s worked for Horn in the past, be on board?

Yes, Horn said. He will.

I knew Horn could read my thoughts.

But what about the local GOP’s fatwa against the Judas who ran Nathan Fletcher’s edgy indie mayoral campaign and then signed on with — horrors! — Democrat Bob Filner in the general election against GOP darling Carl DeMaio?

Later, stuck on stage, I compared my style of journalism to sportswriting.

In baseball, they talk of five-tool players, those blessed specimens who can hit, hit with power, field, throw and run.

In politics, I look for candidates who can talk to the press, talk with power on the stump, field questions out of left field, throw elbows in debate, and run the table in fundraising. Those are the five-tool pols who change history.

My instincts tell me that Horn’s last supervisorial campaign will be among his most difficult. The bench of prospects is deeper than I’ve ever seen.

San Marcos Mayor Jim Desmond, a Republican with a good pro-growth civic story to tell, has been sending signals that he might run. Desmond could poach developer dollars from Horn, for 18 years a spigot right into Horn’s war chest. Desmond’s got the tools to move up in a conservative district.

On the coast, Oceanside Mayor Jim Wood, a moderate Republican who backed out of the 2010 supervisor race, has indicated he might run from his safe mayoral seat, a play possibly more attractive now that he’s been yanked from SANDAG by a hostile majority. Wood’s average is fantastic in O’side’s neighborhoods, but would he make contact outside North County’s largest city? Scouts have to be convinced.

Also on the coast, Peder Norby, a county planning commissioner and longtime business consultant in Carlsbad and Encinitas, keeps coming up. No question, this Republican with a strong environmental bent would complement Democrat Dave Roberts, the recently elected 3rd District supe. They’d be a slick double-play combination. When Roberts talked at his swearing-in ceremony about a “new generation” on the board, he could have been thinking of Norby, an upbeat champion of pragmatic consensus. On the other hand, Norby’s never faced electoral pitching. He might not be able to hit a curveball covered in spit.

After the meeting, as we posed for pictures, I asked Horn when he was going to start fundraising.

Next month, he said, at his 70th birthday party.

While candidates wander around like Hamlets, wondering if they ought to run or ought not to run, Big Boss Bill is raising money, the mother’s milk of any political player with any shot at the majors.